Tag Archives: BBC

A bit late with this post I know – so Rugby Town is now famous for a couple of things. Yes, the game of Rugby was invented here, hence the name ‘Rugby Football’ (I am constantly amazed at the amount of people that are not aware of this fact). Most recently, we gained even more infamy. The Great KFC Chicken Coup.

Never in the history of news and media have I been more amazed at the amount of effort that went into reporting the lack of chicken at KFC outlets across the uk. For two days, the media was full of it. At one point, the BBC reported over 60% of the UK KFC outlets were closed due to no chicken.

DHL had just taken control of the delivery contract and made a complete fudge of delivering. The source of their error – The Rugby Depot! Lorries full of chicken were being turned away from the DHL distribution centre and the freezers inside the depot were full! The local council also admitted that the DHL centre did not have the correct paperwork to store food at that depot.

Poor DHL……….probably bullied the historical supplier into submission with a bid that was artificially low just to get the business and then cocked up in magnificent style.

Another couple of weeks of intense study for me before I head to Liverpool for an exam on 23rd. Head down in the books on a daily basis for the last month and hopefully this week a few more things will click into place. This will be only my second ever time in Liverpool, or more precisely Birkenhead (say that with a scouse accent – it sounds great)

After a brief visit to the hot tub last night I put on some old Top Of The Pops. I watched an hour and a half of clips from 1964 – 1975 and you know what, the first thing I noticed was how skinny everyone was back then – everyone. Some rare old tunes came along too, some rare old tunes like the Righteous Brothers. Did you know, Bill Medley was one of the Righteous Brothers? Remember Dirty Dancing? The Swayze? The last song of that movie was ‘I had the time of my life’ by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes. There you go – I have educated you this morning.

There were several old time ‘bangers’ in there but I have opted to share just one. I wanted to share an old Rod Stewart track too but couldn’t find it outside of the BBC. Maggie May was awesome in its own right but made particularly special with a guest appearance from the late John Peel of BBC Radio fame faking the mandolin solo. If you have BBC iPlayer – you can find it there on the BBC4 channel.

Lets get political ! OK, Olivia Newton-John sang about getting physical but the lyrics still fit the tune, try it !!

Fake news is a new watchword, all over the media. I can’t decide if it is deliberately fake news or just people embellishing stories, misreporting facts, not researching correctly of just trying to be seen as the first to publish something fashionably ahead of all the others. The latter being the reason they haven´t researched the subject properly.

Now, Donald J Trump uses the words fake news an awful lot and I want to analyse that a little. See, I think Trump is being quite clever about this. The media are well known for hashing up shit, misreporting or to be more accurate with that – selectively reporting what happens in the world

By selective reporting I mean that they leave relevant information out so that the facts they present, distort the truth to the point that they completely change the story.

Remember that TV advert for the Guardian Newspaper from a few years ago? Several different camera angles as a skin head ran towards a city slicker with his briefcase?

That is exactly what I mean, the skin head was saving the city slicker from a falling pallet of bricks but a different camera angle would have you believe he was trying to snatch his bag. Ironically, that advert itself was misrepresented too, with the final cinematic cut not being the same sequence as the other angle presented.

But move on to Trump. This is where I think he is being very clever and ultimately very brave. He is using a media stream to communicate with 20 million followers. In that stream, he can give exactly the information he wants you to see, that only he can edit, no media slant, misrepresentation, no so-called experts opinions, just his own voice.

There is also a down side to that. He can write whatever he likes, admittedly he will have some self censorship but ultimately if he wanted to tweet ‘Hilary is a Lazy old cow’ he could. So for his own gain, he could also deliberately mislead 20 million followers with no-one able to call him to task on it before it hits the outside world.

I am still curious about Trump. In a year of big political upsets, where the establishment is being challenged, it brings a little bit of hope. I am tired of weak and woolly politicians speaking without actually saying anything meaningful. Many of them too scared to say what they really think or what their electorate want them to bring into the public forum. Nigel Farage was not like that – he generally said what he thought and also what many of the voters were thinking too. Not afraid to say what he thought might just need saying. I am so curious about the enigma that is Mr. Trump that I opened a twitter account purely to follow him – show me another politician that has grabbed my interest so much that I did similar!

Now, a few of you might think that I have gone a little mental right? Donald Trump, Nigel Farage but let me throw a few more names at you – Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders and a name soon to vanish into the political archives Angela Merkel

Merkel is about to pay the ultimate political price for not listening to the concerns of her voters, a trip to the political wilderness is all hers – she will get hammered in this years elections.

Geert Wilders is even more interesting. All the opinion poles are suggesting that he will get support but not enough to form a government – opinion poles, remember how wrong they have been in recent history? I think old Geert just might surprise a few people.

Marine Le Pen – not this time is my prediction, but next time yes. France is not ready just yet but her time will come. François Hollande will be walking off to the wilderness hand in hand with Merkel

Wow, you might think, what on earth has rattled my cage today?

The Bloody BBC !!!

I hate this. I have for many years been proud of the BBC – an establishment that can be trusted, to report fairly and fully. Respected around the globe for its neutral stance on delivering accurate information – but it’s been on a slide.

Being out of the UK a lot, my first choice for news is the BBC. I see spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes, factual mistakes in their news now. There used to be a time where they had a website to report these errors. Send them a note with a link to the page and they would deal with it. Not any more. I can only assume they got tired with the amount of corrections that they shut down the site to tell them about errors rather than address the real issue.

You have seen it too right? A reporter is looking at Facebook or some other web site and using that as their single point of research on a story. They claim a ‘social media outcry’ on a topic and post 3 examples. In a country of around 60 million people – 3 comments from internet warriors is hardly a social media outcry in my book.

You may have noticed too that the BBC also use google maps to add photos to their stories. Lets say Alfred Hitchcock was shot dead in Wankalot Street, Greater Manchester. Do they investigate further or just type wankalot street into google maps and screen grab a picture of that street? It is assumed that Google has listed the map & street correctly then published all over the BBC.

Lets not forget inaccurate reporting too. Ever read a story where they say something like ‘more than 12 cars were damaged’. What – you can only count to 12????? Investigate, give us facts because 1000 cars is more than 12 and 1000 suggests more of an incident than 13 doesn’t it?

The BBC is under threat of extinction and it would be a real shame and completely irreversible if it were lost just momentarily. If nothing is done to stop the nonsense it is starting to spout its demise is just around the corner.

I just read an article on Scottish Independence. I see Nicola Sturgeon is now wanting another independence referendum. I say give it to them and we can bury her political career next to Alex Salmond. The article in question is linked below. I just don’t know why these people hate the English with such a passion but let them get on with it – I am sure the Scots have more sense than Sturgeon credits them with.

The article headlines with ‘Scottish Independence support at highest ever level’. Later into the story it writes this paragraph.

Asked to choose between independence, devolution and not having any kind of Scottish Parliament at all, 46% of the 1237 people surveyed between July & December of last year now back independence.

I have two issues with this. Such a small sample of people to make, what is, a huge statement from is wrong, but pollsters, you can’t tell them anything right?

More importantly, I seem to remember the last Independence vote Scotland took ended 45% Independent to 55% stay in the Union. So why such a dramatic headline for Independence support when in fact only a 1% increase has happened and that 1% was from less than 1300 people in a country where 4.5 million voted last time .

By the time that headline has been regurgitated a dozen times on social media it will be 70% in favour of independence – and you wonder where fake news comes from ?

Don’t blame Zuckerberg and Facebook, blame the cannon fodder that blindly hit the share and like buttons. Don’t take my word for it though, research it yourself here

Phew – rant over. Holiday time is just a few days away. I will be back in Europe from 22nd March until 24th April and there are some key people I really would like to see.

Sister, Parents & Uncle at the top of the list of course, then there are others – Connor, it’s about time I took you for a coffee after all of your avid reading. Faggot pants Clifton might also get a visit while I am in Cornwall visiting Maria Moore. There is also the real possibilities of Portugal, I hear the very lush yank from Salt Lake City is back in town, Zenia-June and of course Mallorca to meet with Jones the Prick who is about to become a father for the first time. If I am in Mallorca, I have to meet with Belahendro and Bomber too – the list is endless but does also include John and Mon or the future in -laws if I can just get Lynsey to say yes !

Flying on the 21st, back on the ground and on my UK number from 06:30 on 22nd – send me some love

But they wont will they? Seems the BBC has employed more than their fair share – I guess that’s what you get for being politically correct? 5% of your employees must be one eyed lesbians, another 5% fucktards, 3% retired ice cream vendors with a dog named Patch who lost a testicle in the Vietnam War etc etc etc.

So the article in question – I was reading the news yesterday and saw a piece about an earth quake in Italy that had triggered an avalanche. I understand that I may not be the sharpest tool in the box but this……?

Earthquakes cannot be predicted with precision but seismologists had suspected this particular area of central Italy would experience another batch of serious tremors sooner or later

Now, if there were an award for vague predictions, this would definitely get second prize. Second only to a weather girl I watched once (on the BBC) who made the startling prediction that 2013 had a 50% chance of being a hotter year than 2012. I hope her parents hadn’t invested too much in her maths degree. To have the two options of hotter or colder clearly is a 50/50 situation, or in other terms 50%. Turns out she had told us bugger all.

But sooner or later ? Come on FFS – that isn’t rocket science. It isn’t really even a prediction is it. It’s reality.

Lightening the load a little. My Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge experiment has been boxed for now. I was trialling a very lush looking Samsung while here for two reasons. I have been intrigued by the Samsung for a long time now and secondly, having a local SIM in a different phone meant that I could still use iMessage to communicate with the rest of the world.

As beautiful as the Samsung is, I have struggled with its functionality. Not that Android is no good, my problem lies with the shite internet connections I have to suffer while working at sea. I need to investigate more about how to use the phone at its best and that just isn’t possible with a sht connection.

So now it is boxed, fully charged and ready to try again when in blighty or sell on to a lucky bleeder that will get a £625 phone for a smidge over £400 I suspect.

I went back to the iPhone 6s after trying for hours to get photos off the Samsung onto a work computer so that I could order parts. Certain that the flaw was the internet speeds but I couldn’t plug the Samsung into the Mac and draw the photos off and that pissed me off!!!!!

That said – I did really adore the Samsung – a very pretty phone and with an expanded memory of 232GB – plenty of music could be had if only I could figure out how to store it on the SD card !!!!!

It’s Sunday, so before I start the normal moan and groan, let’s have a little happiness shall we? I saw these two cats the other day and they reminded me of the Chuckle Brothers. I did watch all the way to the end and did even manage to chuckle to myself a few times. I bet you a pound to a penny you can’t watch these two without having a laugh.

I told you so – to me to you to me to you to me to you

Now, let’s get started on the more serious stuff. Scary Clowns. I like this new craze but have yet to sight one for myself. Why do I like it ? well, when one of these fools stands in front of me, one of two things will happen.

If I am in my car, the suspension will be lowered so that when I drive over them, there is no space between the underside of my car, the road and their head.

The other option will be simply to thrash them to within an inch of their life with my bare hands.

I wonder how long it will be before one of these dick heads gets a good pasting or better still (In the land of the good old USA – shot to pieces). I look forward to reading that story on the BBC.

Staying with the USA at the moment, I really can’t wait to see which candidate gets elected. I have to admit that more of me would like to see Trump in power purely because he will shake the shit out of the establishment – god knows all political scenes would benefit from a good shake up. I do feel for the yanks though – I mean really, it’s not much of a choice is it now?

The ideal political situation is to have two opposing parties that are both suitable enough to be in power, that keeps everyone honest – but America, holy shit – not a choice I would want to be faced with.

Lets moan about good old Apple again. I see they have a new OS on release now, been out for a week or two. Now historically, for the last three or four years, I have always waited before upgrading to read the reviews. This stems from an old upgrade I did that was so shit, I actually uninstalled it and ran with Mountain Lion for the next three releases. Anyway, as a matter of course, I look at the reviews in the app store. Now normally the reviews are so bad – so unbelievably bad. This has been the case for the last three OS releases where more than 50% of reviews were giving just one star, with many recommending that you don’t install it.

So I look again in the App store this morning to see what the last two weeks of reviews are saying about it. What did I read? Nothing. not one single review has been left. Now normally that would suggest that no-one has taken the app but in this case I can’t believe that in the last two weeks, none of the apple lemmings have clicked on the download button.

That leads me to only one conclusion. Rather than deal with the issues that users have openly complained about – remove the platform that allows them to comment about it. Can that really be the case? Apple, what is wrong with you? I predict grim things for your future. I am one more step closer to a return to a Windows system and an android phone !

My next startling prediction will be that in the next iPhone, the earphone jack will be back!

Now, on a happier note – on Wednesday I am heading to Doha, Qatar for a 5 week assignment. Never been there before and always been curious about it so a 5 week stint is perfect for me. My only concern is the new Dreamliner I will be flying out of Birmingham on. My concern is all about carbon fibre.

I have been sailing on boats made out of that stuff for years without concern. My issue is flying with it. lets see, a failure at sea level in a boat is pretty easy to overcome – I can swim. A failure at 35,000 feet is a little bit more tricky to deal with – I have still yet to perfect my gliding techniques, especially when I am unconscious due to lack of oxygen. That said, lack of oxygen should make hitting the ground at 120mph fairly painless.

Anything else to moan about ? No I don’t think so.

I would like to say hello to a few people though. I did recently open a Facebook account again after a good 5 years without one. My reasons where completely innocent – there were a couple of recruitment pages that I needed to access on there. That said, people started noticing I was there again and sending requests. I very quickly realised why I had stopped using it all those years ago.

So I decided to never send a request but always accept them if I was sent one. (see Shazza, that’s why I couldn’t look for you). I even got requests from people I have no idea about – weird huh?

As I plugged along on my very muddy 10k run this morning I had plently of time for thoughts. If I am honest, the run itself was far from perfect. The tow path was a mud bath and the woods at the back of Abbots Farm almost had me on my arse twice.

Time wise, it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting, not quite 2 minutes slower than my best on that route but it was muddy!

I slipped into thoughts. Lets talk about Apple for a moment. I read an article this week on the BBC that their latest iOS software for their phones has been permanently disabling phones that have been for repair by independent phone shops. You send your new phone away for a screen replacement or a new home button and it comes back with ‘error 53′. You might think this is not the end of the world but in iOS9 – this now means your phone is useless – it will never work again and any info on it is lost for good.

I have been experiencing similar bullish tactics with my Mac after recently upgrading to El Capitan. You see , the biggest problem with computer updates is you are always told what they have added but they NEVER tell you what they have taken away. If you knew which functionailities were removed, updating would never be an option for most users.

So now, if I want to email you a photo, I can no longer use the attach button from my mail browser and then go into my photo library and find it – nope, Apple want you to buy into their Cloud product, that lets you share easily (or more easily than the way they force you into if you won’t pay), so instead now I have to open the photo app, drag a copy to the desk top and then attach it from there. Hardly progress from what is one of silicone valleys’ giants now is it? The last software was better.

It doesn’t stop there. iPhone users that have the latest software will find that airdrop has changed too. No longer can you open air drop and make your phone visible to only people in your contacts list as with the older software, no, privacy on airdrop is now only available if your contacts are in the cloud.

Of course, there is a price for using the cloud.

As my Mac gets older, slower and clunkier and needs some financial input I find myself questioning the rational for moving back to a windows based pc and an android phone. See, a pc of the same tech specs as the Mac will be around half the price and comes with the freedom to source ‘stuff’ from outside of the world of the manufacturer. Its getting to be an easier choice to make. There was a time when I would have used that line of thought as a down side though. Have you ever been on the end of a windows based problem where the hardware manufacturer blames the software and the software manufacturer blames the hardware?

It did make me think though – some time ago the EU ruled that car manufacturers had to make all of their car computer diagnostics plugs the same as each others. The reason was to allow independent garages not to have to invest in different computers for all of the makes out there – or to put it in very basic terms, to allow more competition as to where you as a consumer can spend your money. I can’t see that this is any different than that?

Hark back to better times, when Apple products were wanted because they were revolutionary. Those days died with Mr. Jobs. Cancer affects more of us than you might believe.

Of course, a lot of Apples problems come from the ‘hipsters’ that just have to have the latest stuff. I was looking on iTunes the other day for info about Birdys new album when I noticed that although the release is not due for another month, 11 people had left reviews for it. The ‘I am so trendy crew’ had got there before the record company have even cut the final disc! Dont believe me? look at the screen shot below.

I got into a debate on the Apple help forums the other week with a guy called Terence Devlin. Terence suggests that people should stop complaining about when things change for the worse or stop working completely with Apple products because people aren’t running the very latest software. His solution was to ‘upgrade – its free’ As our debate raged on, I mentioned that over 50% of the product reviews on the Apple store for its last iOS release gave it 1 star out of 5 with the majority of those recommending that you don’t install it at all (more 1 star reviews than 2,3,4,&5 added together). Terence then suggested that those negative reviews should be ignored because people like to complain. At that point, I gave up with the fucktard and left him to his little world of what I suspect is a very wealthy family that pay for whatever his little hipster heart desires. I also suspect that he doesn’t work for two reasons.

He is always camped outside the Apple store to be the first to get whatever is new that week.

Daddy pays him a jolly good allowance each month so the reality of earning a living is left to the serfs and peasants on street level

So back in the UK for 10 days. It is cold and wet here. Sure, the South of France gets cold too but it is dry, the air is dry which makes for a different, almost warming kind of cold. Add to that I have allowed myself to be bullied into going to Bike Park Wales on Wednesday with The King of Touching Cloth himself – Mr Yates. The very next day I have my ships medical to give me the green light to set sail for the next 2 years and then early next week, a funeral – but more on that later.

I am expecting to sustain some physical damage on Wednesday, not only from being miserable from the cold and wet for hours but also because of the tricky or even treacherous conditions will lead to mishaps I am sure. Fingers crossed, it will be Yates this time. While he is in a bundle of pain on the floor, I will pull along side him and gleefully jib, ‘see you at the bottom dick wad’ as is the norm for our outings – I like to think of it as the ‘Top Gear’ style of caring for your chums. I have little choice though – it will now cost me as much to back out of it as it will to go – and I hate wasting money.

Could this be just coincidence? I just watched an article about the re-printing of Adolf Hitlers ‘Mein Kampf’ in Germany, when at the end of the article, the reporter appears, bearing more than just a small resemblance to Hitler himself. Thing I am kidding? follow the link to the BBC website.

There, got that out of the way – all he was missing was a small moustache and it could have been a rebirth. The germans recently made a film about that actually, not so much a rebirth but an awakening from a cryo-sleep. Called ‘Look who’s back’. Should be one to add to your must watch list along with another spectacular called ‘God Bless America’.

Thats it for now – I have nothing to rant nor rave about save for the fact we are about to get a good blow here – and sadly that isn’t a reference to an oral session !

A week in blighty is closing in – the saga of the Range Rover Sport and the local Guy Salmon Land Rover Dealer will soon be exposed – or if they do the right thing, it will be amicably resolved – just like my recent experience with an ebay seller called ‘Jayissurfing’. Sent me a T shirt with crooked print and when I got in touch with him, he appeared mortified and immediately sent me two more free of charge. Good Lad!

Now all I need to hear is that the Land Rover dealers sub contractors did indeed fuck up my steering geometry and damage all four tyres and they will put it right.

So here I sit, alone, on a 14 million euro super yacht in Cannes at a time when England play the mighty Australia to stay in the world cup competition. Should be an exciting time right?

Not so

Currently there is a huge thunder-storm sitting directly over the boat, lashing it with hailstones and 40 knot winds. That alone is not so bad. I mean, a huge electrical storm directly overhead and I am sitting inside a carbon fibre boat, now soaking wet with a mast nearly 50 metres closer to the storm than everything else around me. You shouldn’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that carbon is one of the most electrically conductive materials known to man. Risky business this yachting lark.

But please spare a thought. My TV connection is via satellite, not through a fibre cable under the road. Storm clouds block satellite transmissions perfectly. Electrical storms interfere with the signal, then block it, just to be doubly sure you can’t watch it.

No problem, Radio 5 live – I streamed the Welsh game on my phone on the drive down.

My french IP address gives me away – cannot stream the game on 5 live – of course they never told me that, I was listening to the build up right up to kick off when they cut the program. So now I am reduced to the text only stream on the BBC website and now England are 3-10 down !!!

And the storm just knocked out my shore power too – still, I can use the heat from the generator to dry out my pumps that got wet in the storm 2 days ago.

I think I will stay inside until tomorrow and fix the shore power then.